NOM

http://www.fairmormon.org/wp-content/up ... tion-1.pdf

Wow there are some serous mental gymnastics to come up with this stuff.. a secular translation? Really?

I pulled the final 2 paragraphs from that paper 20/20. Here it is:

So, a larger conclusion that we can draw is that we’ve got both the smoking-gun –
the GAEL that he uses to translate, and we’ve got an eyewitness. We know exactly how
Joseph Smith attempted to translate from the Kinderhook plates and obtain the content
that Clayton says he did. A larger conclusion, then, that we can draw is that Joseph Smith
translated from the Kinderhook plates not by revelation, but by non-revelatory means.
So, we have James D. Bales saying “only a bogus prophet translates bogus plates,” and
we’ve got Joseph Smith saying, “a prophet is only a prophet when he is acting as such.” And
when a prophet is just comparing characters in two documents, he is not “acting as such.”
Thank you.

This is crap because it opens up "plausible deniability" which the church loves. For years the church did NOT consider these a secular attempt...they were the real deal, and now that they are falsified, they are considered JS just doing his best?

It actually shows JS as a con-man. He declared things authoritatively,....and he got people to believe him. Being a secular translator doesn't justify this..

So it is that in the 100-year battle of straw men and straw arguments, Joseph Smith needs no defense—he simply did not fall for the scheme. And with that understood, it is perhaps time that the Kinderhook plates be retired to the limbo of other famous faked antiquities.

This is the concluding statement from lds.org from an article by Stanley B. Kimball, professor of history at Southern Illinois University, a high councilor in the St. Louis Missouri Stake. It's from 1981. I'm not sure where it was published but can be found on the church website.

"the Kinderhook plates be retired to the limbo of other famous faked antiquities."

I assume Kimball is referring here to the Book of Abraham . . .

It's of more than a passing interest that the church leaves out a critical quote from 2 years previous to Kimballs article by a key-holding apostle of the Lord, Mark E. Peterson:

"There are the Kinderhook plates, too, found in America and now in the possession of the Chicago Historical Society. Controversy has surrounded these plates and their engravings, but most experts agree they are of ancient vintage." Petersen, Mark E. (1979). Those Gold Plates!. Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft. p. 3.

Oh wait . . . wait . . . sorry. Mark was only wearing his dunce cap, not his I'm a seer, revelator, and the Holy Ghost would never lead me astray so believe everything I say/write ' hat. Oh. And this was written well before the church essays so his apostleship couldn't have possibly been aware of any church history ripples in the farce I mean force.

Here's the link to the 1981 Kimball article. I'm not sure why I'm posting it. I read the whole thing and wish more than anything I could get those 20 minutes of my life back:

https://www.lds.org/ensign/1981/08/kind ... x?lang=eng